Readying For An IPO, Jive Software Raises $30 Million From Kleiner Perkins And Sequoia

Jive Software, the maker of an all-in-one social enterprise software, has just raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers with existing investor Sequoia Capital participating in the round. This brings Jive’s total funding to a whopping $57 million. Jive’s CEO Tony Zingale declined to reveal the valuation of the company but said that he was “very pleased” with the number. Ted Schlein, Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins, will join Jive’s Board of Directors.

Modeled to offer Facebook-like features to enterprises, Jive’s software combines computing with social collaboration to offer fully-featured social networks for businesses. Its suite of applications help businesses collaborate on a variety of tasks, including holding discussions, communication, sharing documents, blogging, running polls, and social networking features and more.

Zingale, who joined Jive as CEO in February, also mentioned that the company is preparing for an IPO within the next twelve months. This isn’t terribly surprising considering the company’s growth trajectory over the past year. Jive just launched integration of LinkedIn profiles into the site, licensed the full Twitter firehose of Tweets and extended its service in Google’s App Marketplace.

And Jive acquired social media monitoring startup Filtrbox, and expanded its operations to Silicon Valley with a new Palo Alto office. Customers using Jive’s software include Charles Schwab, Intel, Nike, and VMware. The new funding will be used for product development and innovations for the software.

In terms of Jive’s numbers, the company is seeing sales in the range of $75,000-$150,000 per customer, which is increasing. Jive has closed ten $1 million deals, four of which closed in the last two quarters. While Jive is not yet cash-flow positive, he company has 3,000 customers, 15 million users, and will end the year on a $100 million run-rate. This is impressive revenue considering Jive is competing against a number of worthy competitors in the social enterprise space, including Sociatext and Salesforce’s Chatter.

It’s no surprise that Jive is readying for an IPO; rumors have been swirling that Jive has been interesting in going public for some time. And with Zingale at the helm, it looks like this dream is becoming a reality.